Matt Millen has returned phone messages with the same greeting for years, and Saturday morning was no different.

The idea was to reach out to Millen to gain some insight on the Hall of Fame candidacy of his former coach Tom Flores, but also to check in to see how he was feeling five weeks after a heart transplant that saved his life.

“I feel pretty good,” Millen said. “Working out, doing what I’m supposed to do. Back in the woodshop. Back in the weight room, on the elliptical. I started walking the hill behind my house. I’m going to get that thing conquered here sooner or later.”

Millen, 60, suffered from amyloidosis, a disease in which the protein amyloid builds up and damages internal organs. Millen was diagnosed in the summer of 2017 and had been on a transplant list for more than two months.

When the 2018 season began, Millen did television analysis on Raiders preseason games and began his college schedule with the Big Ten network before taking a leave to await to concentrate on his health and await a possible transplant.

Word came from the hospital of a donor early on Dec. 23. By 12:30 in the afternoon, Millen was at the hospital being prepped.

“I think they did the surgery from 2 (a.m.) to 6 o’clock,” Millen said. “I was up and walking the next day.”

Millen has few details about the donor.

“They keep it very simple,” Millen said. “I know it was a `he.’ He’s 26 and out of state. I know he was 6-foot-2, 180 pounds maybe. That was an important piece because they had to get the same size donor.”

The new heart came just in time.

“When my doctor took out my heart, he saw how much it was damaged,” Millen told Peter King of NBC on New Year’s Eve. “He said I must have tremendous reserve from training. That thing was so stiff and hard the doc didn’t know how it was still contracting to pump the blood.”

Both before and after the surgery, Millen has been awestruck by the support from friends and strangers alike.